Krohne Group, a leading global manufacturer of process instrumentation, measurement solutions and services, has developed an integrated, easy-to-use solution to take advantage of the increased number of IoT sensors and equipment increasingly installed by default in brownfield industrial sites around the world.
With Phoenix Contact and Software AG, Krohne has developed a scalable, secure best-of-breed solution: the OT-IT bridge. It brings diagnostic information and process measurement values onto IoT platforms with minimal additional effort. Each partner contributes its specific knowledge: Krohne as a long-standing manufacturer of solutions for process instrumentation, Phoenix Contact with its expertise in OT connectivity and automation technology, and Software AG as one of the global market leaders for integration platforms as well as IoT and analytics solutions for enterprises, said a statement.
Leveraging NOA (Namur Open Architecture) and OPC UA, the OT-IT Bridge paves the way to deliver Process Industry 4.0 stakeholders are pushing to deliver in the quest for ongoing optimisation, it said.
Frank Janssens, Vice President, Krohne Middle East and Africa, said: “As a family company with over a century of expertise to draw upon, Krohne still sees the value of collaboration. By bringing together best in class technological partners, we can deliver what our valued customers expect: high-quality data-driven solutions that maintain the security and safety aspects crucial to mission-critical industrial plants worldwide. The OT-IT Bridge enables forward-thinking companies to take full advantage of technology in place today and future proof their diagnostic setups for years to come.”
In designing the solution, the priority was that plant availability, reliability and safety – both cyber security and functional safety – must remain top priorities. For this reason, the partners consider the NOA concept to be a suitable basis for realising OT-IT integration and having the necessary data available in the future to solve Industry 4.0 use cases.
In the future, users can exploit the potential that process instrumentation with HART or Fieldbus interfaces already offers; in addition to the primary measured process value, almost all Krohne instruments transmit diagnostic information regarding their status and other processes values via the digital HART protocol.
In addition to the flow rate, which allows conclusions about build-ups in the pipeline. This can be used for predictive maintenance, for example, if the build-up poses a risk of damaging a pump. Coriolis mass flowmeters also determine the gas bubble content and provide density and concentration measurements. In level measurement, sensors provide information on foaming. Also, pressure or temperature sensors are additionally integrated into various process instruments for different parameters.
The OT-IT interface solution implemented by Krohne, Phoenix Contact and Software AG provides this additional information via the OPC UA protocol. Via the OPC UA interface of a field controller from Phoenix Contact, the data is transferred through the OT-IT bridge to the Software AG platform. This makes the data, for example, available for analysis, monitoring and optimisation. At the same time, it offers an easy possibility to tap into the great potential of existing plants with components and software tools available today, it said.
